Monday, January 11, 2010

"Sicilian Vespers" revolution against the occupying Angevins is traditionally viewed as the birth of the Sicilian Mafia. There are no contemporary mentions of the name "Mafia," a term which comes into being hundreds of years later, but the underground movement against Anjou may be seen as the ancestor of a later Mafia.

1792

New York, US

Coulter's Brewery is erected at the Five Points intersection of New York's Lower East Side, facing Paradise Square. The Brewery in later years and in a later incarnation as a broken-down tenement would become the centerpiece of New York's most impoverished and criminally active neighborhood.

1805

Genoa, Italy Giuseppe Mazzini Birth

1834

New Orleans, US Joseph P. Macheca Birth. (according to one source, his name was originally Peter Carvanna).

1837

New York, US

Coulter's Brewery on the Lower East Side becomes a tenement house. In the decades to come, it would become known as the "Old Brewery" and be inhabited by the poorest of the New York City's immigrant poor. It would be the site of numerous gang battles, murders and assorted crimes.

c.1845

New Orleans, US Joseph P. Macheca Macheca's father was sent off for a long prison stay and urged his wife Marietta to remarry. She married Giuseppe Mercieca (Joseph Macheca), who was originally from Malta and had established a fruit selling business in New Orleans. Young Peter Carvanna's name became Joseph Peter Macheca. Joseph Macheca Sr. later had two other sons with his wife Marietta.

1854

Corleone, Sicily Antonio Morello Approximate date of birth in some older sources for the most senior of the Morello-Terranova brothers. While a New York immigrant named Antonio Morello did earn a criminal reputation around the turn of the 20th Century, it now appears that he was not related to the Morello-Terranova family.

1857

Monreale, Sicily Charles Matranga Birth

1858

New Orleans, US Charles Matranga Family moves from Sicily.

1859

Palermo, Sicily Giuseppe Mazzini Revolutionary and former member of Neapolitan Camorra, Mazzini seems to have united Palermo opponents of Bourbon rule within a "Mafia" underground organization built along the lines of the Camorra.

1860 Jan

New Orleans, US Raffaele Agnello Palermo Mafioso Agnello arrives in New Orleans. His brother Joseph is already settled in the city.

New Orleans, US Joseph Macheca Wealthy Macheca returns to Louisiana, sets up steamship trading company, involves himself in local Democratic politics. Begins to organize the "Innocents" gang of Sicilian immigrants.

1867 May 2 Corleone, Sicily Giuseppe Morello Birth. (a.k.a. Peter, "The Clutch Hand.") Giuseppe Morello appears to have been the oldest of the Morello-Terranova brothers. He was half-brother to Nicholas Morello(Terranova) and Ciro and Vincent Terranova. A number of sources incorrectly place Giuseppe Morello's birth in either 1863 or 1870.

1867

Sicily Rosario Meli Meli, 22, possibly a key player in the youth-oriented early Mafia, is convicted of murders. He escapes from police.

1868 Oct

New Orleans, US Joseph Macheca Macheca's "Innocents" gang gets its first notice from authorities and media during the Presidential election season. The gang conducts violent raids against Republican African-Americans in the French Quarter.

1868 Oct 28 New Orleans, US Joseph MachecaRaffaele Agnello,Litero Barba On his way home from a meeting of Macheca's Innocents gang at the Orleans Ballroom, Litero Barba is shot to death at the corner of St. Philip and Chartres Streets. Barba is a leader of the local Messina colony. While the killing was first attributed to African Americans, Mafia leader Raffaele Agnello was later deemed responsible.

1868

New Orleans, US Rosario Meli,Raffaele Agnello,Joseph Macheca Meli turns up in New Orleans as a subordinate to Raffaelo Agnello, who is challenging the rule of the indigenous mob of Joseph Macheca.

1868 Dec

New Orleans, US Raffaele Agnello, Joseph Agnello, brother of Mafia boss Raffaele Agnello, hosts a party at his Royal Street residence to bring together the competing factions in the local Sicilian underworld. The gathering turns violent. Agnello lieutenant Alphonse Mateo is shot in the face at close range. Messinian faction boss Joseph Banano is shot in the back. Both men survive.

1869 Feb 15 New Orleans, US Raffaelo Agnello, Agnello sends his brother Joseph and several other members of his organization to attack the Messinian gang bosses at home. The group bursts into a Chartres Street residence, opening fire with shotguns. Messinian leaders Joseph Banano, Giovanni Casabianca, Pedro Allucho and two other men managed to escape with only minor injuries.

1869 April 1 New Orleans, US Raffaele Agnello,Joseph Macheca Assassin Joseph Florada ambushes and kills Agnello in front of the Macheca produce store on Toulouse Street. He shoots Agnello in the face at close range with a blunderbuss pistol. Agnello bodyguard Frank Sacarro pursues and shoots at the Florada. Florada escapes through a nearby bakery.

1869 July 22 New Orleans, US Raffaelo Agnello Agnello's death is avenged as his brother Joseph and Salvador Rosa murder Messinian leaders Joseph Banano and Pedro Allucho near the French Market.

1869

New Orleans, US Joseph Macheca,Raffaelo Agnello Macheca's gang puts down the remnants of the Agnello challenge. Macheca helps to establish the Matranga family as the leaders of the local Sicilian underworld.

American East and West are joined by railroad - 1869 1870

Monreale, Sicily

The Stuppagghieri criminal group comes to light in Monreale. It competes with old-line Mafia there.

1871

Italy Jim Colosimo Birth. (a.k.a. "Big Jim".)

1871

Giuseppe Mazzini Death - about 66 years old.

1872 Apr 20 New Orleans, US Raffaelo Agnello Agnello's brother Joseph is shot to death at the Picayune Pier. His killers are Joseph Maressa, Joseph Florada and two other men.

1872

Chicago, US Jim Colosimo Arrives in Chicago.

1874

Sicily Antonino Leone,Giuseppe Esposito Mafia gains international attention as leader Leone and his lieutenant, Giuseppe Esposito, kidnap English banker and demand ransom. Payments are slow. Leone reportedly mails first one ear, then the other, and then a portion of the victim's nose to his family. Reports of the mutilation appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

1875

Sicily Antonino Leone,Giuseppe Esposito Under pressure from the English government, the Italian army moves against Leone. Enduring significant losses, the army encircles Leone's band in the hills and captures the leader as well as Esposito. Leone is sentenced to life in prison (serves only a few years before escaping to North Africa), but Esposito escapes from police and returns to lead the Sicilian Mafia.

1875

San Francisco, US Rosario Meli Meli and some followers move from New Orleans to San Francisco in the hopes of establishing themselves as leaders of a Mafia group there.

1878 Sep 29 New Orleans, US Salvatore Marino Leader of the rebel Mafia movement known as Stuppagghieri (Stoppaglieri) dies after a bout with Yellow Fever.

1878 Nov

New York, US Giuseppe Esposito With authorities on his trail, Espositio decides to flee to U.S. Sails to New York via Marseilles, France. Notes that New York underworld is dominated by Irish gangs with some smaller, inconspicuous Italian/Sicilian gangs. Possibly gets to work organizing the Mafia in New York.

1878

San Francisco, US Rosario Meli Meli and several associates are accused of murder. An underling confesses to the killing and insists it was a matter of honor. No prosecution in the case. Group then charged, convicted and jailed for robbery.

New Orleans, US Giuseppe Esposito,Joseph Macheca Looking for greener pastures, Esposito and some associates relocate from New York to New Orleans. Finds Macheca agreeable to sharing underworld leadership. Esposito renames himself Vincenzo Rebello.

1879 Oct

New Orleans, US Giuseppe Esposito (a.k.a. Vincenzo Rebello) Esposito marries Sarah Castagno. News travels back to Sicily, where Esposito left a wife and children.

1880

New Orleans, US Giuseppe Provenzano Esposito lieutenant Provenzano controls work on New Orleans docks.

1880

New Orleans, US David Hennessey Hennessey, who works in the New Orleans police force along with his cousin Mike, first becomes aware of a Mafia presence in his town.

1880 Sept. 8 San Francisco, US Rosario Meli American officials seek to deport Meli. He is moved to New York and reportedly boarded ship for Sicily. However, he seems never to have arrived at his destination.

1881 Jul 5 New Orleans, US Giuseppe EspositoTony LabruzzoDavid Hennessey Learning of his Sicilian Mafia connections through his Sicilian wife and an informer, Tony Labruzzo, Hennessey nabs Esposito and turns him over to be deported. Esposito returns to New York City on July 13 for an extradition hearing.

1881 Jul 13 New York, US Giuseppe Esposito Esposito insists he is Vincenzo Rebello and has been wrongly identified. He cannot be deported until authorities can prove his identity through photos and witnesses. New York Sicilian community mobilizes to assist him.

1881 Sep 21 New York, US Giuseppe Esposito His identity proved, Esposito is deported, faces murder charges in Italy. Internal struggles erupt within Mafia organizations in New Orleans and New York as Mafiosi seek to determine who has betrayed Esposito.

1881

Rome, Italy Giuseppe Esposito Convicted of murders, Esposito is jailed for life.

Electric lights make their debut in lower Manhattan - 1882 1882

New Orleans, US Giuseppe Provenzano,Joseph Macheca,Charles Matranga,David Hennessey Two factions emerge in New Orleans after Esposito's arrest. Provenzano's group, comprised of more traditional mafiosi with ties to Palermo leadership, are angered that Macheca did not use his political influence to save Esposito. The Macheca-Matranga faction includes home-grown criminals. Macheca is able to use political muscle to have Hennessey brothers dismissed from police force.

New York, US Johnny Torrio Taken to live in New York by his recently widowed mother.

1884 Apr. 5 Staten Island, New York, US Antonio Flaccomio,Camillo Farach Farach's dead body is found in a field on Staten Island. His business partner (cigar store at 103 Degraw Street in Brooklyn), Antonio Flaccomio, is primary suspect. Police believe the two dueled with sword canes over a financial disagreement. Coroner's jury eventually decides that Farach's death is the result of a suicide, though he was stabbed both in his chest and his back.

New York, US Antonio Flaccomio,John Farach Flaccomio, in hiding in Buffalo, Chicago, Louisville and New Orleans since 1884, resurfaces in New York City. He appears before John Farach, brother of Camillo Farach, admits responsibility for Camillo's death and asks to be allowed to return to live in the city. Farach tells him to stay out of Brooklyn or he will be killed.

1887 Apr. 14 New York, US Antonio Flaccomio A friend leads Flaccomio to a dark spot at Manhattan's Jersey Street, near Crosby Street, and attacks him. Flaccomio is prepared for the betrayal and shoots his assailant in the wrist. The two men flee. Flaccomio runs a grocery nearby at 607 Third Avenue. He has apparently been condemned to death by regional Mafia leaders who believe he violated underworld codes by taking Camillo Farach's life in 1884 and by aiding a government investigation into Sicilian counterfeiting rings.

1887 Jun 6

Cesare LaMare Birth.

1888

New Orleans, US David Hennessey A wave of reform sweeps through New Orleans and leads to Hennessey rejoining the police force as its chief.

1888

New Orleans, US Rocco Geraci Geraci is identified as top enforcer for the Macheca-Matranga group.

1888

New Orleans, US Joseph Macheca,Charles Matranga,Giuseppe Provenzano Authorities believe Macheca-Matranga organization has imported 320 members of the Stoppaglieri group from Sicily. Macheca-Matranga is preparing for all-out war against Provenzano's Mafia and begins challenging Provenzano's monopoly on the docks.

1888 July 20 Corleone, Sicily Ciro Terranova Birth. (a.k.a. Ciro Morello, "The Artichoke King," "The Boss," and in at least one reference "Whitey.")

1888 Oct. 14 New York, US Carlo & Vincenzo Quarteraro,Antonio Flaccomio Flaccomio stabbed to death in the first recognized Mafia murder in New York. Brothers Carlo and Vincent Quarteraro are accused of the crime, which occurred in front of the Cooper Union building at Eighth Street and Third Avenue, not far from Flaccomio's grocery. Flaccomio was drinking and gambling with acquaintances at La Trinicria restaurant at Manhattan's St. Mark's Place, owned by Giuseppe Canizzaro and Natale Sabatino. An argument erupted. Sabatino and Francesco Aita escorted Flaccomio out of the restaurant and down the street. Carlo and Vincenzo Quarteraro charged after Flaccomio with knives. Carlo stabbed Flaccomio to death. Police decided that the killing was the result of a vendetta linked to the betrayal of Sicilian counterfeiting rings and to the murder of Camillo Farach.

1888 Oct. 22 New York, US Carlo & Vincenzo Quarteraro,Antonio Flaccomio Carlo Quarteraro, believed to be the actual murderer of Flaccomio, has fled the country. His brother Vincenzo turns himself in to police, believing he is wanted merely as a material witness. Vincenzo is charged with murder. NYPD Inspector Byrnes announces to the press that the Palermo, Sicily, Mafia has branches in the United States, headquartered in New York City and New Orleans.

1889 Jan. 24 New Orleans, US Giuseppe Provenzano,Vincenzo Ottumvo,Joseph Macheca,Charles Matranga,David Hennessey According to Chandler, Provenzano attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with Macheca-Matranga, but his emissary, Vincenzo Ottumvo, is axed to death. (Note: This story is at odds with police records.) Hennessey attempts to intervene in the erupting conflict. Calls a conference and arranges truce but appears to be siding with Provenzano.

1889 Feb 11

Joseph Bruno Dovi Birth

1889 Apr.

New York, US Carlo & Vincenzo Quarteraro,Antonio Flaccomio Vincenzo Quarteraro is acquitted of the Flaccomio murder. Disgusted police detective remarks that Italians in New York can go ahead and "kill each other."

1889

Palermo, Sicily Ignazio Lupo Lupo, just 12 years old, is believed to have murdered a man named Salvatore Morello (apparently unrelated to the Giuseppe Morello family). Flees to New York to escape prosecution.

New Orleans, US Giuseppe Provenzano Provenzano defendants are convicted of the killings, but judge throws out the verdict and orders a new trial.

1890 Summer

New Orleans, US David Hennessey Police chief prepares to testify on behalf of the Provenzano group in second ambush trial Oct. 17 and to expose the Macheca-Matranga mob.

1890 Oct 15 New Orleans, US David Hennessey,Joseph Macheca,Charles Matranga Hennessey is ambushed near corner of Girod and Basin Streets at about 11:30 p.m. He was on his way home to 275 Girod Street. Boy walks ahead of him along the street and whistles a signal. Gunmen emerge and kill the police chief.Macheca-Matranga leadership is hauled in and charged with the assassination.

1891 Mar 14 New Orleans, US Joseph Macheca,Charles Matranga Angry mob asembles, enters the jail and murders most of the defendants. Macheca is among those killed. Charles Matranga manages to survive the incident and later becomes recognized head of New Orleans underworld.

1891

Cosenza Province, Italy Francesco Castiglia Birth of Frank Costello. His birthplace is usually said to be the village of Lauropoli. But Selvaggi names the town of Cassano Jonio.

New Orleans, US Giuseppe Provenzano,Charles Matranga Provenzano family flees New Orleans as Matranga organization absorbs the remainder of the Provenzano mob. Matranga is supreme Mafia boss in the city.

1892 Dec 4 Brooklyn, US Antonio Morello,Francesco Meli Antonio Morello allegedly kills Neapolitan Francesco Meli of Brooklyn. Incident may represent a struggle over control of the Brooklyn docks. Morellos establish control bases in Brooklyn and upper Manhattan/Bronx. Lower Manhattan appears to be left alone (still dominated by Irish. Jewish gangs).

1895 is generally regarded as the official start date for the Unione Siciliana in Chicago. The Unione became a national brotherhood providing support for Sicilian immigrants but was later contaminated by Mafiosi and turned into a criminal network. An earlier start date for the organization (or, perhaps, an earlier parent group) appears likely.

1895

Brooklyn, US Giuseppe Balsamo (a.k.a. "Battista Balsamo") Arrives in New York. Was an established Sicilian Mafioso. One source claims erroneously that he was the first American "Godfather." His authority was likely confined to a region of Brooklyn.

1895

New York, US Francesco Castiglia Frank Costello arrives in New York. Family settles into apartment on East 108th Street and begins operating a small grocery.

1895 July 4 Waterbury, CT, US Antonio Spadola Local Mafioso Spadola is implicated in the shooting of Nicolo Errico.

1895 Sep 11 Waterbury, CT, US Antonio Spadola Newspapers report that Patrolman Charles Fiore, expected to testify in the Spadola trial, has been threatened by members of the local Italian community.

1896

Sicily Sam Carolla Birth (orig. Sylvestro Carolla)

1897 Feb 6 New York, US Louis Buchalter Birth. (a.k.a. "Lepke.")

1897 Feb 20

Nicolo Licata Birth.

1897

New York. US

Legend: Patriarch of Morello-Terranova clan is gunned down after a night of gambling.

Spanish-American War - April 20, 1898, to Dec. 10, 1898. 1898 Jun 13 Springfield, MA, US Natale Giuliano Giuliano is charged with the shooting death of his in-law Pietro Fazzio on a busy street in broad daylight. Witnesses against Giuliano become suddenly forgetful.

1898

New York, US Antonio Morello Shot down. Possibly 44 years old. Despite published claims, this Morello was apparently not related to the Morello-Terranova underworld clan.

1899

New York. US Charles Ubriaco Arrives in New York and sets to work for Lupo-Morello group.

GERMAN JEWS DURING THE HOLOCAUST, 1939-1945 RELATED ARTICLES RELATED LINKS

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

1933-1939

In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews by religious definition lived in Germany. Over half of these individuals, approximately 304,000 Jews, emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship, leaving only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the eve of World War II.

In the years between 1933 and 1939, the Nazi regime had brought radical and daunting social, economic, and communal change to the German Jewish community. Six years of Nazi-sponsored legislation had marginalized and disenfranchised Germany's Jewish citizenry and had expelled Jews from the professions and from commercial life. By early 1939, only about 16 percent of Jewish breadwinners had steady employment of any kind. Thousands of Jews remained interned in concentration camps following the mass arrests in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) in November 1938.

Deportation of Jews from Greater Germany, 1941-1944See maps

World War II

Yet the most drastic changes for the German Jewish community came with World War II in Europe. In the early war years, the newly transformed Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland), led by prominent Jewish theologian Leo Baeck but subject to the demands of Nazi German authorities, worked to organize further Jewish emigration, to support Jewish schools and self-help organizations, and to help the German Jewish community contend with an ever-growing mass of discriminatory legislation.

Describes deportation from BerlinPersonal stories

Following the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, the government imposed new restrictions on Jews remaining in Germany. One of the first wartime ordinances imposed a strict curfew on Jewish individuals and prohibited Jews from entering designated areas in many German cities. Once a general food rationing began, Jews received reduced rations; further decrees limited the time periods in which Jews could purchase food and other supplies and restricted access to certain stores, with the result that Jewish households often faced shortages of the most basic essentials.

German authorities also demanded that Jews relinquish property “essential to the war effort” such as radios, cameras, bicycles, electrical appliances, and other valuables, to local officials. In September 1941, a decree prohibited Jews from using public transportation. In the same month came the notorious edict requiring Jews over the age of six to wear the yellow Jewish Star (Magen David) on their outermost garment. While ghettos were generally not established in Germany, strict residence regulations forced Jews to live in designated areas of German cities, concentrating them in “Jewish houses” (“Judenhäuser”). German authorities issued ordinances requiring Jews fit for work to perform compulsory forced labor.

In early 1943, as German authorities implemented the last major deportations of German Jews to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz, German justice authorities enacted a mass of laws and ordinances legitimizing the Reich's seizure of their remaining property and regulating its distribution among the German population. The persecution of Jews by legal decree ended with a July 1943 ordinance removing Jews entirely from the protection of German law and placing them under the direct jurisdiction of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauuptamt-RSHA).

Deportation

Public imagination associates the deportation of Jewish citizens with the “Final Solution,” but indeed the first deportations of Jews from the Reich-albeit Jews from areas recently annexed by Germany-began in October 1939 as part of the Nisko, or Lublin, Plan. This deportation strategy envisioned a Jewish “reservation” in the Lublin District of the Government General (that part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to the Reich). Adolf Eichmann, the German RSHA official who would later organize the deportation of so many of Europe's Jewish communities to ghettos and killing centers, coordinated the transfer of some 3,500 Jews from Moravia in the former Czechoslovakia, from Katowice (then Kattowitz) in German-annexed Silesia, and from the Austrian capital, Vienna, to Nisko on the San River. Although problems with the deportation effort and a change in German policy put an end to these deportations, Eichmann's superiors in the RSHA were sufficiently satisfied with his initiative to ensure that he would play a role in future deportation proceedings.

In addition, RSHA officials coordinated the deportation of approximately 100,000 Jews from German-annexed Polish territory (the so-called province of Danzig-West Prussia, District Wartheland, and East Upper Silesia) into the Government General in the autumn and winter of 1939-1940. In October 1940, Gauleiter Josef Bürckel ordered the expulsion of nearly 7,000 Jews from Baden and the Saarpfalz in southwestern Germany to areas of unoccupied France in a second deportation of German Jews. French authorities quickly absorbed most of these German Jews in the Gurs internment camp in the Pyrenees of southwestern France.

Upon Hitler's authorization, German authorities began systematic deportations of Jews from Germany in October 1941, even before the SS and police established killing centers (“extermination camps”) in German-controlled Poland. Pursuant to the Eleventh Decree of Germany's Reich Citizenship Law (November 1941), German Jews “deported to the East” suffered automatic confiscation of their property upon crossing the Reich frontier.

Between October and December 1941, German authorities deported around 42,000 Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich -- including Austria and the annexed Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia -- virtually all to ghettos in Lodz, Minsk, Kovno (Kaunas, Kovne), and Riga. German Jews sent to Lodz in 1941 and to Warsaw, the Izbica and Piaski transit ghettos and other locations in the Generalgouvernement in the first half of 1942 numbered among those deported together with Polish Jews to the killing centers of Chelmno (Kulmhof), Treblinka, and Belzec.

German authorities deported more than 50,000 Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich to ghettos in the Baltic states and Belorussia (today Belarus) between early November 1941 and late October 1942. There the SS and police shot the overwhelming majority of them. After selecting a small minority to survive temporarily for exploitation as forced laborers, the SS and police interned them in special German sections of the Baltic and Belorussian ghettos, segregated from those few local Jews whose survival the SS and police had permitted, generally to exploit special occupational skills.

Such “German ghettos” within a larger ghetto framework existed notably in Riga and in Minsk. SS and police officials killed most of these German Jews when they liquidated the ghettos in 1943. After late October 1942, the German authorities deported the majority of Jews remaining in Germany directly to the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau or to Theresienstadt.

German regulations initially exempted German Jewish war veterans and elderly persons over the age of sixty-five, as well as Jews living in mixed marriages (“privileged marriages”) with German “Aryans” and the offspring of those marriages from anti-Jewish measures, including deportations. In the end, German officials deported disabled and highly decorated Jewish war veterans as well as elderly or prominent Jews from so-called Greater German Reich and the German-occupied Netherlands to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto near Prague. Although the SS used the ghetto as a showcase to portray the fiction of “humane” treatment of Jews, Theresienstadt in actuality represented a way station for most Jews en route to their deportation “to the east.” The SS and police routinely relocated Jews from Theresienstadt, including German Jews, to killing centers and killing sites in German-occupied Poland, Belorussia, and the Baltic States. More than 30,000 died in the Theresienstadt ghetto itself, mostly from starvation, illness, or maltreatment.

In May 1943, Nazi German authorities reported that the Reich was “judenrein” (“free of Jews”). By this time, mass deportations had left fewer than 20,000 Jews in Germany. Some survived because they were married to non-Jews or because race laws classified them as Mischlinge (of mixed ancestry, or part Jewish) and were thus temporarily exempt from deportation. Others, called “U-Boats” or “submarines,” lived in hiding and evaded arrest and deportation, often with the aid of non-Jewish Germans who sympathized with their plight.

In all, the Germans and their collaborators killed between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews in the Holocaust, including most of those Jews deported out of Germany.

Grinberg Archives

Jewish deportees from Magdeburg in the Warsaw ghetto View historical film footage

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Myths and realities

Facts and figures

Generation X can technically be defined as the generation following the Baby Boomers. Xers were born between 1965 and 1980, 1961 and 1981, 1964 and 1979, 1963 and 1979, 1965 and 1975 or since the mid-1960s, depending on which source you use. For practical purposes we will say that Generation X was born between 1965 and 1980, now ranging in age from 17-32 and usually judged by characteristics assigned to them by the media.

Generation Xers were brought up on television, Atari 2600s and personal computers. They are the generation that was raised in the 1970s and 1980s, and saw this country undergo a selfish phase that they do not want to repeat.

"Generation X grew up in the 'me generation' of the 1980s, and now they are able to see that it is not all it is cracked up to be," said Jackie Shelton, 31, vice president of Minor Advertising in Reno.

David Bever takes time from studies to play video basketball. Photo by Arthur Pines.

The term Generation X came from a book written in 1991 by Douglas Coupland by the same name. It is a fictional book about three strangers who decide to distance themselves from society to get a better sense of who they are. He describes the characters as "underemployed, overeducated, intensely private and unpredictable."

Coupland took his book's title from another book "Class," by Paul Fussell. Fussell used "X" to describe a group of people who want to pull away from class, status and money in society. Because the characters in Coupland's book fit that description, he decided on the title "Generation X."

The media found elements of Coupland's characters' lives in America's youth and labeled them Generation X. This stereotypical definition leads society to believe that Generation X is made up of cynical, hopeless, frustrated and unmotivated slackers who wear grunge clothing, listen to alternative music and still live at home because they cannot get real jobs. It is a label that has stuck, stereotypes and all. copyright 6/1/97 Nevada Outpost http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost

Sunday, January 03, 2010

A comparison of U.S., Russian, Chinese, British, and French nuclear forces undermines the recurring argument that Washington is falling behind. As Kingston Reif explains in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, debunking this “modernization myth” demonstrates clearly that the U.S. nuclear arsenal remains second to none.